Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

After serious consideration, Professor Kong Zhemin asked: "Can it be understood as a popular science textbook for ordinary people?"

Yu Pingan nodded: "Yes, you can understand it that way.

"We want to use the Internet to allow more people to see these contents and provide more efficient retrieval methods.

"At the same time, in terms of the content of the compilation, it is not too esoteric and professional for ordinary people to understand; neither is it too empty, vulgar, and useless.

"That is why I'm here, hoping to invite you to collaborate.

"You are not only an expert in the industry but also a professor who is loved by students, and you have a wealth of experience in writing textbooks. It is absolutely foolproof to have you to quality check these contents."

Professor Kong Zhemin was a little surprised.

"It sounds like a great thing for the future.

"However, this seems to be a very large project."

"There are a large number of categories in various courses for Chinese majors, such as ancient literature, modern literature, foreign literature, etc. Even if they are compiled and simplified into encyclopedias, the content is beyond imagination.

"What's more, the expandable content of the question-and-answer section is unlimited. This is not something that can be accomplished in a mid-term.

"I need to tutor postgraduate students so I might not have enough time.

"If a lot of people are working hard to do this, how would you want to pay, and how will you bear the cost…? Have you considered these issues?"

Yu Pingan was prepared as he hurriedly explained. "Prof Kong, don't worry, we've already considered them.

"This project was decided by Boss Pei of our Tengda Corporation. We can mobilize the entire group to do it.

"I also asked Boss Pei about the workload, his answer was: the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, followed by now. It's precisely because this is a huge project that it cannot be delayed. If we drag on, nothing will be done.

"Even if the content was incomplete at the beginning—as long as the information in it is useful, it can attract users.

"As for manpower, don't worry. You are equivalent to the person in charge of this professional field. You will only be in the overall planning and will be the highest supervision. We will also invite some young scholars, professors, and outstanding graduate students to participate in these projects, and they will be responsible for different divisions of labor.

"We will fully protect the intellectual property rights of creators and, at the same time, set up a legal team to combat the phenomenon of manuscript washing and plagiarism and protect the rights of creators.

"Creators are paid monthly according to their star rating and workload.

"As for the distribution method and remuneration, all members of Useful App need to pay to browse, according to the usage time and page views. We will collect 10% of this income as the operating cost, and 90% of it will be returned to the creator based on the proportion.

"Of course, considering that there are not enough paying members in the early stage, we will provide a guaranteed remuneration for all creators. As long as the content reviewed and approved that month exceeds 10,000 words, they can get a subsidy of 2,000 yuan."

Professor Kong froze for a moment. "This subsidy will not change based on the number of words?"

Yu Pingan nodded: "Yes."

"This is streamlined knowledge. If the remuneration is linked to the number of words, there may be a slight flooding phenomenon.

"This subsidy is just a basic living guarantee, so that creators will not be missing out too much in the early stages.

"Of course, that is not encouraging compensation without regard to performance and slackers.

"When there are enough members on Useful App, their income will definitely increase. We will determine the income weight of each department and each creator according to a more complex algorithm—including creator star level, the number of views of written or modified content, the initial creation of new items, the number of content likes and the proportion, etc.—to calculate the revenue share for each section and each creator.

"This income is incentivizing."

Professor Kong Zhemin nodded slightly. "That makes sense."

Domestic professors should be regarded as one of the groups with the largest income variance, but more than 90% of professors did not have much extra income apart from salary and basic performance.

The lecturers of Handong University had an annual salary of less than 100,000 yuan, and the associate professors have an annual salary of less than 130,000 yuan.

Especially professors who were devoted to academic work in liberal arts majors. They were usually quite poor.

The subsidy of 2,000 yuan was not much, but it could be obtained as long as 10,000 characters were generated for Useful App every month—which was quite attractive. After all, that was not as difficult as writing a paper since it was mainly to organize existing knowledge.

Moreover, the content must be vetted and approved to be valid so there would be no unlimited irrigation, and there would be no 'spending money for garbage' phenomenon.

Professor Kong Zhemin carefully considered: "Mr. Yu, I can trust Tengda Group, and I can feel the sincerity in all aspects of the conditions.

"Moreover, this is a good thing for the future. I have been in education for a lifetime. I would be very happy if I can contribute to a wiki on the Internet.

"However, I want to ask…

"It should be difficult for your company to make money by doing this project? Is this some kind of charity project or a new business model?"

Confusion was in Professor Kong's eyes.

Indeed, the conditions in all aspects were quite good.

However, the problem was that these conditions seem to be too good. They were good for content creators and users, but not for the company.

Just set aside 10% for operating expenses; wouldn't that a big loss?

Even if someone was doing public welfare and raising the company's reputation, one should still pay attention to efficiency?

The current Useful App would take a long time to make, would burn a lot of money, and would have slow results. It wouldn't have much influence at all until it had real results. What was its gain?

Even if it was considered in the best case and became popular in a few years or even more than ten years later, who could consider such a long-term thing?

That was why Professor Kong was confused and felt that it was a bit strange.

Yu Pingan was silent for a moment and said, "Prof Kong, I also asked Boss Pei about this question.

"Boss Pei said… someone had to do it.

"He wants to create a pure land without rubbish for the Internet."

Professor Kong Zhemin was silent for a moment and nodded: "Yes, I agree.

"This venture… it doesn't matter whether it makes money or not, and it doesn't matter whether you succeed or not.

"The significance of this matter itself is very important."

Yu Pingan's eyes couldn't help but gleam: "Thank you so much, Professor Kong! With you, many things are so much easier!"

Kong Zhemin smiled: "Don't thank me; I should thank you. There are not many companies like Tengda with a strong sense of social responsibility.

"Boss Pei is indeed a very different entrepreneur."

Yu Pingan couldn't help but sigh. Sure enough, Boss Pei's personal charm was really too strong!

He could clearly feel that Boss Pei's words touched Prof Kong very much.

A big boss like him had long been in a stagnant state. He had achieved fame; he taught and did research every day. Money wouldn't be able to move him if it wasn't something he was interested in.

However, Boss Pei's words had moved Professor Kong!

The addition of Professor Kong Zhemin would not only add an expert to the literature section of Useful App, but it also guaranteed the professionalism and quality of various contents. More importantly, when Useful App were to be expanded to other fields in the future, it would be easier convenient to move the other experts.

When all kinds of experts from different fields gather together, a cluster effect would be formed: more high-quality content, more excellent producers, and naturally more and more users.

It was a good beginning!

…

…

October 26th, Wednesday…

At Otto Technologies…

The AEEIS development team was doing their work intensively.

The current artificial intelligence assistant technology was simply divided into two parts: front-end and back-end.

The front-end was mainly speech recognition and speech synthesis technology, which converted the user's spoken language into text and then the returned text result into voice output.

In the background, the program processed the user's request and returned the best matching result.

In general, the current artificial intelligence assistants on mobile phones were mainly responsible for four dimensions: device control and system function calls, third-party application support, dialogue and intelligence, and skill-learning capabilities.

The initial technology of the artificial intelligence assistant was provided by Xunke Technology, and various manufacturers were only updating and optimizing on this basis.

However, whether smart assistants were useful or not depended on how well the manufacturer had to optimize these four dimensions.

Chang You decided to focus all his energy on system function calls, dialogue, and intelligence during this development cycle.

Third-party application support and skill-learning capabilities were also very important, but these two had more content. Moreover, only some users may have that particular need so the priority was lower.

The so-called system function call was the user's voice control of the mobile phone system function.

For example, if the user said 'weather', the smart assistant would automatically display the weather page on the screen and read out tomorrow's weather conditions and temperature changes.

Similarly, calculators, calendars, memos, calls, text messages, etc. could all be controlled by smart assistants, which would bring a certain degree of convenience to users.

Conversation and intelligence were how the smart assistant would react when the user asked some more personalized questions.

For example, when asking 'who is your daddy?', some intelligent assistants would answer 'my dad is a product manager in the development department' while some artificial intelligence assistants will answer 'a group of smart people who dare to innovate'.

Strictly speaking, this point did not have much practical significance, but it would make AEEIS more recognizable.

That was because according to Boss Pei's requirements, AEEIS was an artificial intelligence with no emotions… so when all other voice assistants used anthropomorphic voices, AEEIS would use unsentimental mechanical voice.

Now that the lack of 'personality' had already been established, it must stand and cooperate in other aspects.

Only by making these personalized customizations and matching the character and voice of AEEIS could it show that this product had a high completion rate.

Previously, the day after finalizing the name of AEEIS, Director Zhu Xiaoce spoke to Chang You and wanted to ask for a name for artificial intelligence to be used in movies and games.

The two departments had cooperated as early as Tomorrow is Beautiful'. This time, they naturally thought of working together. Chang You told Zhu Xiaoce about what he was doing in AEEIS. Zhu Xiaoce readily agreed and gave the name to the movie and in the game.

They could then use the popularity of movies or games to promote AEEIS, why not?

Chang You came out of the conference room after he finished discussing some key functions with a few key members.

After drinking a sip of tea, Chang You found that the people-in-charge had refreshed a few messages in a small chat they had privately; one of which was sent by Yu Pingan.

This group is not used for chatting but sharing about what was happening in each department.

Yu Pingan: "Useful App has successfully got Professor Kong Zhemin onboard!"

Chang You put down his teacup, a little curious.

Useful App?

What was that?